The present invention relates generally to indoor luminaires and more particularly to a luminaire and luminaire arrangement for indirectly lighting a room by directly lighting the ceiling within the room.
Today there is a tendency to design offices and schools with flexibility as one primary object. More specifically, many offices are being designed so that the desks, actually the furniture generally, and in some cases even the partitions, if any, are readily movable for rearranging the overall area. This is equally true of many schools, especially with respect to work tables and partitions. Accordingly, there is a special need for flexibility in lighting within areas of this type.
It has been found that down lighting, i.e., direct lighting in the downward direction, particularly by means of ceiling hung fixtures, does not fulfill this need for flexibility. Down lighting generally is usually predesigned in accordance with a predesigned arrangement of people and work stations, for example desks, within the given area being lighted. Once the particular fixtures are selected in accordance with this predesigned arrangement, it is difficult to rearrange the fixtures with a rearrangement of people and work stations within a room and maintain the lighting efficiency originally designed into the arrangement. It is, of course, even more difficult to do this where the lighting fixtures are fixed, for example in or to the ceiling as is typically done where down lighting is provided.
As will be seen hereinafter, the present invention overcomes many of these deficiencies by eliminating this concept of complete down lighting. More specifically, as will be seen, the present invention provides an arrangement for indirectly lighting a given area, for example an office or school, by directly lighting the ceiling within the area.